ders, the light in the west, lingering clear and pure
and cold, shone upon her and added radiances to her eyes.

But Aunt Annie watched her with silent pain. Barbara from her bed spoke
sharp and cruel words which Grace Allen listened to not at all.

For as soon as the morning shone bright over the hills and ran on
tip-toe up the sparkling ripples of the loch, she looked across the
Black Water to the hidden ways where in the evening her love should meet
her.

As she went her daily rounds, and the gripper-iron slipped on the wet
chain or grew hot in the sun, as she heard the clack of the wheel and
the soft slow grind of the boat's broad lip on the pebbles, Grace Allen
said over and over to herself, "It is so long, only so long, till he
will come."

So all the days she waited in a sweet content. Barbara reproached her;
Aunt Annie perilled her soul by lying to shield her; but Grace herself
was shut out from shame or fear, from things past or things to come, by
faith and joy that at last she had found one whom her soul loved.

And overhead the dry poplar leaves clashed and rustled, telling out to
one another that love was a vain thing, and the thrush cried thrice,
"Beware." But Grace Allen would not have believed had one risen to her
from the dead.

So the great wasteful summer days went by, the glory of the passionate
nights of July, the crisper blonde luxuriance of August. Every night
there was the calling from the green plot across the Black Water. Every
night Aunt Annie wandered, a withered grey ghost, along the hither side
of the inky pool, looking for what she could not see and listening for
that which she could not hear. Then she would go in to lie gratuitously
to Barbara, who told her to her face that she did not believe her.

But in the first chill of mid-September, swift as the dividing of the
blue-black thunder-cloud by the winking flame, fell the sword of God,
smiting and shattering. It seemed hard that it should fall on the weaker
and the more innocent. But then God has plenty of time.

One chilly gloaming there was no calling at the Rhonefoot. Nevertheless
Grace rowed over and waited, imagining that all evil had befallen her
lover. Within, her aunt Barbara fretted and murmured at her absence,
driving her silent sister into involved refuges of lies to shield young
Grace Allen, whom her soul loved.

The next day went by as the night had passed, with an awful constriction
about her heart, a numbness over